A Bargain at Twice the Price

So there's been another multiple shooting, this one at a school, and among the six people killed were three children.

This turn of events has sparked the same, tired, "debate" that each of the last ones for the past several years have. As always, Democrats are calling for restrictions on the public availability of "assault weapons" and Republicans are offering platitudes and blaming things on mental illness. What this means in practice is that Republicans are arguing for a status quo that Democrats find intolerable.

And they're arguing for that status quo, because that's what their voters want. There are plenty of reasons for this desire, but they all add up to a willingness to select candidates for office based on whether said candidates will vote to allow them to retain their weapons. And they understand that the frequent shootings are the price that is to be paid for that.

It could be worthwhile for the debate as a whole to acknowledge that. It's difficult to have watched the United States over the past few years without realizing that a lot of people in the country are willing to tolerate high death tolls if that means retaining what they understand to be their entitlements. Given that state of affairs, harping on the numbers of dead and injured is pointless. If there is a threshold that would serve to change their minds, it hasn't been reached yet. So perhaps there is value in accepting that as a given and moving on, rather than spinning up a fight that isn't going to be won anytime soon, if ever.

But this is the United States, and the idea people are either right-thinking or willfully perverse is embedded in the culture. Along with the idea that if someone doesn't care enough to listen, they're not being shouted at loudly enough. But those people who are invested in the current status quo enough to trade lives for it do so for reasons that resonate with them, even if no-one else cares to understand why.